COMMENT | Here are our plans for Malaysia

COMMENT | We agree with columnist Wong Chin Huat, who recently wrote on the need for the next leaders of our countries to have clear and concrete plans for the future direction of the country.

Projek #BangsaMalaysia is working hard to produce a bottom-up, rakyat-driven roadmap for our nation’s future. This is a long and involved process, and a detailed roadmap will take some time to complete.

That said, we were able to reach some consensus regarding some of the broader questions that were astutely posed by Wong:

“First, what is the overarching policy goal - flattening the curve or returning to normalcy? On one hand, can our hospitals not collapse without a full lockdown? On the other hand, can our economy survive an indefinite and real lockdown? What are the objective measures to decide what level of lockdown?

“Third, how to speed up vaccination in both supply and administration? How to allow state governments, businesses and even charities to acquire more vaccines without competing with the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP) for supply? Who should pay for their vaccination and for how much? What incentives in less control should be given to those who are fully vaccinated to encourage vaccination?”

Our guiding principle is the long-term health and safety of everyone in Malaysia. In pursuing this goal, here are our priorities...